Wood Anniversary
by Artemis J. Halk
Summary: The humans celebrated their wedding anniversaries by giving each other strange gifts dictated by exceptionally old traditions. The fifth year anniversary gift was wood. However, Hank had something much, much better in mind to give to Alex than some useless knick-knack that would sit around their apartment and collect dust. Part of my Hank/Alex collection.


This is a sort of direct sequel to "Six Experiments", and I hope that it's much cheerier than that other one was...  
Also, it's not necessary to have read it before reading this one.

This has not been proof-read, so let me know if you spot any errors.

Song Alex sings is David Bowie's Kooks.

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The humans celebrated their wedding anniversaries by giving each other strange gifts dictated by exceptionally old traditions. The fifth year anniversary gift was wood.

However, Hank had something much, much better in mind to give to Alex than some useless knick-knack that would sit around their apartment and collect dust. He just wished that he'd had the foresight to have made arrangements for it to be away from the DEO.

"Oh, come on," Alex complained as Hank pulled into the parking lot of their work. "You said that we'd be able to have the day off on our anniversary."

"We do have the day off," Hank said calmly. "It's already close to eleven. But what I want to give to you is in the base."

"And you couldn't have brought it home with you like a normal person?" Alex asked with some annoyance.

"I think that you would have noticed it," Hank said with some laughter in his voice. "If I'd been smart enough to count towards the day that this project would be finished to know that it would be done around our anniversary, then I wouldn't have arranged for the project to be done on the base at all. But it doesn't matter, and I think that you'll agree with me about it. Or at least, I hope you do."

They got out of the car and made their way inside. A couple of people wished them a happy anniversary as the two of them made their way through the halls. Finally, Hank used a key-card to swipe into a restricted access area. The area was part of Alex's domain, being that she had degrees in bio-engineering, and it was the main reason why she'd been hired for the DEO in the first place.

"Science," Alex said with a sparkle in her eyes. "Can't possibly go wrong with that!"

Hank hummed with agreement and kept walking. Finally, he stopped in front of a door that was guarded with a bio-scanner. Alex frowned as Hank pressed the tips of his fingers against it, and the door slid open.

"Is this new? I don't remember it," Alex asked as Hank lead her inside the room.

"It is," Hank agreed gently.

The interior of the room was dark but exceptionally hot. A couple of people wearing bunny-suits were looking at some equipment and taking notes on tablets.

One of the people noticed that Hank and Alex had walked into the room, and came over to them. He pulled his mask down as he approached them.

"Should we be wearing suits, too?" Alex asked with concern.

"No, no, it's perfectly alright," the man reassured her quickly. "You two are right on time! Come, come!" He waved them over to where the other people were. The others moved away from what they were clustered around as Alex stepped forward, Hank right behind her.

She saw an incubator, filled with dark liquid. There was a tube going into the incubator, but the outside was covered with electrodes. In the murky water, something moved, and a tiny hand pressed up against the inner bubble.

Alex gasped as she realized what this was: it was the set-up for growing a baby, only, the things were much different than the labs that she'd seen in the past.

"Hank?" she said slowly. She was unable to take her eyes off from the incubator.

"I never forgot those experiments that you attempted, Alex," he told her gently. "They weighed heavily on my mind for a long time. But after we got married, I decided to try to give you what you'd been searching for."

"I hadn't been…" Alex trailed off with a slight shake of her head. "It was only scientific curiosity, to see if they were compatible."

"I know. But I hired some former team members from some of the labs, and they've been working on trying to figure it out. Only, since none of them were the parents, it was a lot easier for them. We couldn't quite figure it out, but then when M'gann showed up again…"

"Of course!" Alex whispered, her eyes wide. "Even though she's a White Martian, she's also your niece. Oh, I don't know why I didn't think of that! We'd encountered that other White Martian before, and even though you killed it, I should have studied it and-"

"That one had been male," Hank said with a slight chuckle. "So I doubt that it would have helped your experiments much. But M'gann allowed us to examine her in order to help with our own experiments. Although, if you ask me, she's gotten much too close to Superboy, and that's part of her reasoning for wanting to help us. But that's besides the point."

"Is it a boy or a girl?" Alex asked as she pressed her hands lightly onto the incubator.

"It's a boy," one of the scientists told her.

"Jeremiah," Alex breathed out as tears shimmered in her eyes. "How old is he? When can I hold him?"

"He's a good size by human standards," a woman told her. "There is a bit of discrepancy between what Mr. Henshaw told us and what Meg told us, but we feel good about initiating the birth process now."

"Of course, we would like to keep him… Jeremiah here for a little while just for general observation," somebody else said. "After all, he would be the first Martian-human hybrid, and we just want to make sure that he's going to be okay. So many of his siblings have died before he made it."

Alex nodded with agreement, and then backed up into her husband as the other scientists started to move around and press buttons on the machines that were hooked up to the incubator.

First, the liquid slowly drained, and Alex got her first look at her baby. He was curled up on his side, and a sort of hazy green color, although it was hard for her to be sure because the room was so dark. The tube that went into the incubator vanished between his legs to attach at his belly— the lab version of an umbilical cord.

Finally, the incubator opened from around the tube. Jeremiah opened his eyes, which flashed red before they settled into being some dark color that Alex couldn't tell from the distance and the darkness. He opened his mouth and let out a loud, strangled wail.

"He's got a good set of lungs, that's for sure!" a woman said as she reached into the incubator and gently picked him up. Somebody handed Alex a pair of surgical scissors, and she stepped forward on shaking legs. Another scientist held the tube taunt, and Alex snipped the plastic easily. Another woman tied the tube off— the tubes were designed to resemble human umbilical cords in all ways. It was attached to his belly, and in a few weeks, it would fall off and leave a notable scar, often referred to as a "belly button".

The woman holding Jeremiah whisked him over to a scale. "Five pounds, thirteen ounces," she announced. Then, another scientist helped to stretch him out so that they could measure him. "Seventeen inches. A little on the short side, but judging by his father, I think that he'll more than make up for it as he grows up." They quickly put a diaper on him and wrapped him in a blanket.

Alex and Hank waited anxiously as they ran the typical vision and hearing tests, and then pricked his finger for a blood sample to run some other tests on him.

"If you'd like to hold him now, Mrs. Henshaw?" a woman said. She gestured to a rocking chair in the opposite corner of the room. Alex didn't even bother to inform her that her name was Dr. Danvers; she just went and sat down, and then the woman brought over Jeremiah.

There was the hugest smile on Alex's face as she cradled Jeremiah in her arms. She ran a gentle finger down his cheek, and was amazed at how soft that he was. He looked up at her with eyes that flashed red again briefly before they settled back into being dark.

Hank stood over Alex's shoulder with a matching smile on his face as he watched the first interactions between mother and son.

When his family had been murdered, he thought that he'd never get to feel happiness again. And then he met Alex, who taught him that it was okay to feel emotions other than guilt and sorrow all of the time. She helped him to heal immensely.

But even though Alex had helped him so much, there had always been a broken part of Hank's soul that was his two daughters. He knew that Jeremiah could never possibly be a replacement for Kim and Tania, but he still loved his son, regardless.

"Hi there, my sweet little Jeremy," Alex whispered softly. "I'm your mommy. I didn't even know about you until just now, but I already love you so much. We are going to do so much together. Go to science museums, and build volcanoes and rockets, and play with children's chemistry sets."

Hank chuckled slightly over that. Jeremy wasn't even an hour old yet, and Alex was probably already planning which Ivy League university that he'd attend. Of course, with parents like Alex and Hank, Jeremiah would be exceptionally intelligent.

Alex continued to whisper nonsense to Jeremy as she gently rocked him. He yawned loudly before his eyes slid closed. Alex just kept rocking him, and the new parents continued to stare down at him.

"Hey, we're going to need stuff like a crib and baby clothes and a changing table and food…" Alex whispered to Hank after a while.

"I've already taken care of it," Hank told her. Alex frowned with confusion.

"You have?"

"Yeah. A few months ago, when it seemed more and more likely that he was going to make it. I bought a bunch of stuff, and put it in our storage unit."

"We have a storage unit?"

"It's in the basement," Hank explained. "All of the apartments in the building have one. We still have to put all of it together, though. I figured that it would be easier to carry it upstairs that way."

Alex nodded with agreement. "We're going to have to tell my mom. And I mean everything."

"Now that is a scary thought," Hank said with a slight chuckle.

"How are we going to hide my green-skinned baby from the world, though? Don't you think that the neighbors will notice?"

"I can take care of that," Hank said. He leaned over and gently pressed a finger against Jeremy's cheek. The baby seemed to ripple slightly, and his green skin changed to a pale brown color that looked as if he were half white, half black. However, the transformation woke him up, and he started to scream at the top of his lungs.

"Oh no, shhhh. It's okay, honey," Alex said as she held him against her chest. She started to sing softly under her breath. "Will you stay in our lovers' story? If you stay, you won't be sorry 'cause we believe in you. Soon you'll grow, so take a chance with a couple of Kooks hung up on romancing."

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